Flashforward Stars Talk Sci-Fi Show's New Season

ABC's hit show FlashForward returns Thursday, March 18, with 12 new episodes. In an exclusive interview with Popular Mechanics, stars Courtney B. Vance and Christine Woods dish on what we can expect from the last half of the first season—and why research is a key part of their creative process.

Forget about a FlashForward—Courtney B. Vance and Christine Woods, the stars of the hit ABC series, really need a flashback. During an interview touting the show's March 18 return from a three-month hiatus, the two actors (who play FBI assistant director Stanford Wedeck and special agent Janice Hawk, respectively) couldn't remember where their show left off. "It's so funny because people—my mom especially—are bugging me to tell them what happens when we come back," Woods says, "and I really have to think because it feels like 20 years since we worked on those episodes."

When the show—about a mysterious event that caused the entire world to black out for 137 seconds and while unconscious to see what it would be doing six months into the future—went on hiatus in December, scientist Dr. Lloyd Simcoe had declared his experiment (a specialized pulsed laser for a plasma afterburner) to be the cause of the blackout, much to the dismay of his partner, Dr. Simon Campos, who decided to help the FBI figure out what really happened. The two episodes airing March 18 pick up right where the show left off. Vance and Woods couldn't get into specifics about what we'll find out in this new batch of episodes: "The only thing I really remember is what we're shooting now. And if I tell you that, I'd get in big trouble"—but in their discussion with PM, they did drop a few hints about what viewers can expect.

"The premiere is 2 hours, and there's a lot of good stuff in there," Woods says. For one, Lloyd and Simon might not be the only ones to blame for the blackout. "That definitely could be a possibility as to what caused the flash," Woods says, "but I think what we'll slowly start to find out in episodes 11 and 12 is how many people actually had a hand in it. I think that instead of Lloyd and Simon and the scientific route, we'll have a great insight into all the different people that had a hand in causing this horrible, devastating thing. More bad guys are unearthed when we come back."

For his part, Vance was mum on whether or not we'd actually see his character's flashforward (that is, what he saw during those fateful 137 seconds). "I would like to think that it was more than me being on the toilet," he says of the scenario that his character told others was his vision. "But that's just me."

Since the last episode of FlashForward aired 15 weeks ago, it might be hard to remember all the crazy twists and turns from the show's first ten episodes. A clip show, airing today, will catch you up—but Woods says if you can only keep one thing in mind, make it FBI special agent Mark Benford's board of clues. "That's the major thing we're all working from in the agency," she says, "and a lot of that starts to have importance in its own right."

When we spoke to Woods and Vance at last year's Comic Con, both actors confessed to being mostly in the dark, both in terms of the overall mystery and what was in store for their own characters. That hasn't changed much for the cast, who are currently shooting episodes 19 and 20. "We're just progressing naturally, so we know more information," Woods says. "We have a little more information than we had in the past, but that's really just because we've shot so much."

Another thing that hasn't changed is the research the actors must put in to make the characters in this technology- and science-heavy show believable. Vance and Woods both credit the writers for doing a lot of the heavy lifting. "They're so smart, and so detail-oriented," Woods says. "I think you have to be a science enthusiast to write this type of fiction." Woods also admits to looking up details from the scripts for additional information. "I do a great deal of research when I talk about certain types of government entities where Janice gathers intel," she says. "I have to know exactly what the Fort Mead supercomputer is, and I have to know all of this stuff about satellites. And whenever you have to give big speeches—and Dominic [Monaghan, who plays Simon] has the worst speeches, all of this science stuff, and he pulls it off. He seems like he knows what he's talking about."

Research is key, Vance agrees. And not just for keeping the show realistic, either. "Otherwise," he says, "you guys at Popular Mechanics—you're going to find out."